Chicken Paea

I have no idea if I spelled the name right or not it's a spanish recipe and it was delicious! I love simple one pot cooking meals!!! ;-)

Horse Manure

We picked up a load of aged horse manure last night to put on the east garden. First we put down a layer of chipped leaves and compost, then a layer of garden lime, then the manure, then another layer of lime. By the time we were done tilling up the remaining sod in the side yard, to make one continious garden space, it was too dark and too late to chip the remaining leaves to put on top of the manure! This is my first year lasanga gardening.

New Garden Space

South looking north, about 45 feet, maybe more, for veggies, herbs, and flowers.

I grew rather tired of the rabbits destroying my grapevines, like the local thief wasn't bad enough, so the grape arbor is now inside of the fenced area.

The fence runs along the sidewalk which will soon have thyme and other herbs growing to fill in the space.

Above - looking north towards the garden shed. Below - looking south towards the front porch and the street.

We enlarged the east garden combining it with the south garden beside the front porch. Dh will build a raised bed, octagon shaped, to go around the crab apple tree under which we will plant currants and goose berries.

No more fence hopping for me, John's also building a gate for the garden as well. One of the blessings of no longer having a large dog means I don't have to have a large yard for the large dog and it also means less mowing!!! Now to finish planning the guilds to go around the trees .

Trouble in a Tree

Trouble, our attic squirrel - well it is her fifth year or so of living in our attic not our choice mind you - eating crabapples competing with the robins and cedar waxwings.

Cabbage Seedlings

Oregano, Cilantrao, Basil (sweet basil)

Roma Tomatoes

Purple Cabbages (above) and Green Cabbages (below)

I'm hoping they will all make it if so I'll have a bountiful garden this year!

Snow

It's snowing today, hmmm after several days of above 60F weather, it's supposed to be 8F tonight and my peonies and lilies have decided to make an appearance. I hope they survive this experience. The snowflakes are huge the size of half dollars!!!

Tomatos

I started 36 tomato plants tonight - since they are heirloom seeds that are older I planted extra to see if any actually would germinate. I have a couple of weeks yet before it's too late to start seeds. These are large roma variety that has been handed down from my grandfathers the fruit are about the size of grapefruits, a little larger actually, and occassionaly I get yellow romas instead of red. I'll know more in a week.

Silky 1998-2009

This was the last picture I took of Silky today - we took her to the vet around 5ish and sent her over the rainbow bridge. She just didn't have the energy to pull through this one.

Silky Update

Silky is back from the vet, well until Monday that is we will take her back then for her final visit - for the rainbow bridge, and that's if she makes it until Monday. She can't stand on her own anymore, the vet said her blood cells are destroying one another. The vet also told us that 11 is old for a weimeraner most don't make it to 10 even.

Carla Emery"s Old Fashioned Recipe Book

Carla Emery"s Old Fashioned Recipe Book an Encyclopedia of Country Living copyright 1977. Carla rewrote her book right before her death several years ago.

I get a lot of emails asking me where I learned what I know, most of it is from helping my parents when I was growing up. We always had a very large garden, canned, dehydrated foods, etc., and we raised rabbits and chickens for food. I've supplemented what I knew with books such as these (this book was in with a lot of books I purchased at a sale).

Silky

Silky is not doing so well, fading and very quitely but not doing well. She's 11 now, 13 if you count the borrowed year for having survived cancer the first tiem around.

Olive Oil

John repacked the olive oil, which came in a rather large bottle, into smaller glass pint jars this afternoon. This increases the shelf life by about three months as we will now move the OO to the basement pantry where it stays a balmy 55-60F year round.

Sweet Potato, Sausage, and Kale Soup

This is what we had for dinner and it was delcious. I substituted out Italian flavored Pork Sausage for the turkey sausage and yams for the sweet potatoes which were outrageously over priced ($4.97 a pound~!) The Kale was exceptional in this recipe, it reminds me of a soup I've eaten before down south.

You can find the recipe here http://ourkitchensink.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/on-mirrored-elevators-and-hearty-lunches/

Homemade Dog Food

Yep you read it right I'm making my own dog food! Believe me it was NOT my intention to do this but we lost most of the upright freezer contents in August, once the new chest freezer finally showed up, and I kept some marginal stuff for the pets to eat. You know like the sirloin tip steaks and the ground beef that was partially frozen.

Tomorrow I'll put it through the food processor with the correct proportions of carrots, pumpkin, peas, rice, and some greens. And yes I'll take pictures when I do this! After that it'll get packaged into freezer bags and go into the new chest freezer. And now begins the journey of making dog food, sigh.

Nite all!

Economic Perspective

Watch the video at this link which compares borrowing from 1919-1969 and then that of the last three years http://www.garynorth.com/public/4527.cfm

Orange Marmalade

Ok after an agonizing hour of boiling it all down I forgot, yes I forgot, to photograph the final result before we put it in the jars. Trust me when I say it was much darker than the photos below and looked like orange Marmalade!

Orange Marmalade

My Sweetie

John peeling lemons for the orange marmalade and just a little distracted by what's on tv.

Orange Marmalade

The mixture is covered in water, brought to a boil and then simmered for 5 minutes. It then sits for 12-18 hours and you add the sugar and boil again.

Lemon peels sans the pith and lemon sections on top of the orange sections and orange peels.

Here's a lemon that has been peeled and the pith removed from the sections, I'd never seen a peeled lemon before. Yes I really do need to get out more!!! Dh said the acid from the lemons made his hands burn so you may wish to wear gloves if you are sensitive to these sorts of things.

Oranges cut into sections and the pith removed from the peels.

These oranges came from Texas and were very good! Rio Queen is the variety.

Orange Marmalade in Progress~! This recipe is in the Ball Blue Book.

We stopped at HyVee this afternoon and they had a very good price on oranges 18 pounds for $5.48 I've been wanting to make some for a really long time now but it's hard to find oranges that are not all pith. These oranges were superb in tangyness and in sweetness. We've decided to go back and get another bag tomorrow for juicing. I have plans to make a batch of cranberry orange marmalade as well.

Oven Fried Chicken

Here they are after backing, ignore the white part on the one chicken thigh John said he ran out of flour and I'm STILL NOT CERTAIN what happened!

Coated with corn flakes, flour and spices and ready to be baked in a 375F oven. Below chicken parts awaiting a coating of goodies.

Well it all started on Thursday night, after a very harried day of bookwork etc., and dh's coming home late I decided at the last minute to go to HyVee and buy some chicken already fried up from the deli. And it was really good and we got to talking about it during dinner and the point that it was a dollar per piece of chicken did not go unnoticed!

Soooo John and I decided that it would benefit us more if we made up some chicken this weekend and froze it for those evenings when I"m really tired and REALLY don't feel like cooking but still want something super tasty to eat. We picked up 10 pounds of chicken hind quarters and John made oven fried chicken for us! It's all cooked, they are out in the garage freezing as I write and tomorrow they will go into the freezer. There's several meals worth here!

Learning to Can

For those of you wanting to know more about canning check out this yahoo group here Canning2

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Canning2/?yguid=129581707

French Onion Soup

I forgot to put the sherry in the soup - oh well makes it less calories this way ;-) It doesn't look all that appetizing in the pan this way does it? Good thing it tastes much better than it looks.

French Onion Soup

We didn't have any of the fancy cheese so we used the three cheese pizza cheese on top of the soup - it turned out to be a most excellent choice! That's a slice of toasted whole wheat baguette you seen in my bowl.

A close up.

Six pints of French Onion Soup for future dinners~!

Frosty the Nomad

It's been very cold here with lots of new snow almost every day! John wasn't exactly amused with my need to take his picture in the freezing cold. The temp outside was +2 and the windchill was negative something.

Dinner

John made home made spagetti sauce with meat balls - delicious. I made the salad big whoop right.

I'm Back

Currently I'm getting a custom order ready for a customer and dh is making homemade spagetti sauce!

If you look around you will see that I've been doing some new year cleaning and have added some new blog links - check out the ever growing herbal and plant list section.